<p> This dissertation constructs a philosophy of perception that creates what I call a &ldquo;perceptive ontology of objects.&rdquo; This ontology emphasizes, not the subjective perspectivalism of human identity, but the dynamic emergence of objects into objecthood through impersonal modalities of space, time, light, and sound. Objecthood is an attempt to render perceptive experience as something neither wholly subjective nor wholly objective. Here objects are connected with subjectivity and yet still external. I argue that modernist authors present changeable, novelistic surfaces, which submit the novel&rsquo;s material objects to epistemological doubt. This creates radically interruptive moments of heightened perception, rupturing immediate experience from the more conventionally mimetic, referential, and social surfaces of the novel found within literary realism. These perceptive experiences create representational effects which I call &ldquo;the mimesis of sensation.&rdquo; This creates a sensory surface in the story world through which the reader aligns with the perceptive experiences of characters. This form of readerly connection is distinct from either Aristotelian empathy on the one hand, or Brechtian estrangement, on the other. &ldquo;The moment,&rdquo; a temporality distinct from the present, the modernist works of authors like Mallarm&eacute;, Woolf, Joyce, and Kafka foreground perception itself, altering visions of time to construct discrete and static temporalities. These discontinuous moments create forms of abstract continuity. They thus create a dialectical relationship with narrative. </p><p> These event-like ruptures, occurring through encounters with the surface of objects, offer two distinct notions of time that could serve as alternatives to the post-structuralist critique of the materiality of the signifier as seen in theorists like Derrida and Barthes. First, the surface of the text becomes an expansive medium of perception: a collection of perpetual gestures, interruptions, reflections, and possibilities which arises, not through linguistic play, but through a composite surface of language and perception. A totality emerges through perceptive processes in relation to this medium, not through the infinite deferral of the signified, but through the ongoing logical recession of the object through epistemological immanence. Here I also take an important departure from the work of other theorists of modernity&mdash;Baudelaire, Bergson, Benjamin, and Deleuze, and others&mdash;who suggest an imagistic immediacy to the experience of non-chronological time. My notion of the modernist literary object is distinctively not a ready-to-point-to image. I critique the centrality of images in 20^th-century theories of temporality, arguing that modernism constructs moments of readerly critical alignment not through the satisfaction of visual desire, but by foregrounding processes of apprehension, perception, and inquiry: attempting to decipher an object which is never quite fully known. </p><p> Even as the modernist techniques I study draw attention to the artifice of representation and the difficulties of constructing knowledge, they also frame objects of perception, constructing scenes of aesthetic totality&mdash;available to the spectator so long as she acknowledges the mediated lens through which she looks. I see totality as the possibility that perception could be made whole, the possibility that there is a form of subjectless experience in which perceptive inquiry creates order (as forms of abstract continuity). These totalities, perceivable not in chronologies of external perceptible phenomena, but within impersonal faculties of apprehension, as they coincide with these forms of deeper time, also invoke pathos (through the acknowledgment of dimensions of fate). In four chapters, each devoted to a respective modernist author, the project shows how the works of Mallarm&eacute;, Woolf, Joyce, and Kafka reveal relationships between what I call modernism&rsquo;s &ldquo;moments&rdquo; and the receding totality of the object. </p><p> Chapter 1 of the dissertation argues that a relationship exists between Mallarm&eacute;&rsquo;s reception of impressionism and the poet&rsquo;s linguistic theory. Here I examine Mallarm&eacute;&rsquo;s writings on the impressionist <i> plein air</i> technique in his essay, &ldquo;The Impressionists and &Eacute;douard Manet&rdquo; (1876). <i>Plein air</i> means more for Mallarm&eacute; than just painting outdoors. Air, in Mallarm&eacute;&rsquo;s eyes, is a full presence. Atmosphere is the key to a deep and abstract form of naturalism in his work. Other subjects in this chapter include atmospheric modalities like breath or respiration, speech and the sounds of words, or aspects of nature like weather. In Chapter 2, the novelistic objects of perceptive ontology in Woolfian impressionism create a temporal rupture from realism&rsquo;s more conventional referential representation. I argue that Woolf creates <i> another type of realism</i> through her experiments with time. Importantly, I break from the work of 20^th-century continental theorists of radical time influenced by Bergson (like Deleuze) in which the image plays a central, functional role. Woolf&rsquo;s moments challenge the idea of a Bergsonian image-form not subject to doubt in order to open the imaginative field of literature to what I call &ldquo;the mimesis of sensation.&rdquo; (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.) </p><p>

This dissertation examines how the contemporary French novel is responding to television. While much has been written regarding the threat that television poses to books, narrative, and language, the survival strategies of writers have been largely overlooked. Rather than lamenting the novel's decline, this study asks how writers are rethinking the purpose and form of the novel to better represent televisual subjectivity and to adapt the genre to a new cultural paradigm. Contemporary novelists must negotiate a tension between distinguishing the novel from the medium of television while also integrating their work into mainstream culture in order to remain relevant. How can the novel both rival television and borrow from it? / Romance Languages and Literatures

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Entreprenant l'étude du Roman Catholique Contemporain, nous nous sommes heurté à plusieurs difficultés. Comment maintenir un titre que renieraient les auteurs des romans que nous abordions? Uhamimement, faisant écho à la voix de Francois Mauriac, quelques décades plus tôt ils, déclarent qu'ils ne sont pas des romanciers catholiques mais des catholiques qui font des romans, rejetant une étiquette qui engagerait d'autres que leur propre personne. Comment, pourtant, choisir un titre qui ne correspondît pas à la vraie nature de ce qui devait être exposé? Nous avons donc décidé de nous en tenir à notre idée première, tout en avertissant qu'un romancier catholique ne se veut pas le porte-parole certifié de l'Eglise mais est un écrivain qui transpose dans son oeuvre le résultat de son experience et sa réflexion personnelle, éclairée à la lumiere de sa foi. Le second probleme était celui des limites à imposer à ce travail. II s'est révélé impossible d'examiner d'une facon exhaustive, une production littéraire trop vaste. Un choix s'est imposé. Nous avons, en accord avec les critiques éprouvés, résolu de porter notre attention sur les cinq auteurs les plus marquants: Roger Bésus, Jean Cayrol, Gilbert Cesbron, Luc Estang, et Paul-André Lesort. Là encore, le champ se découvrait trop vaste et il fallait se restreindre. Une nouvelle question surgissait: "Quels romans retenir dans la sélection définitive?" Nous avons inclus délibérément les premiers ouvrages en date, lorsque la critique, ne les présentait pas comme médiocres. Nous avons inscrit aussi les derniers, puisque celui qui fait le point, prolonge toujours sa courbe jusqu'aux données les plus récentes. Pour le reste, nous avons fait fond sur le jugement des sociétés littéraires et nous avons opté pour les publications primées par leur jury. Lorsque ce procédé restait insuffisant, nous nous en sommes encore remis, pour les additions supplémentaires, à l'opinion de la critique, conditionnant autant que possible notre choix au pro-rata de la production romanesque totale de chaque auteur, et prenant soin de ne mutiler en aucun cas un diptyque ou un triptyque. C'est ainsi que la liste des ouvrages sélectionnés se présente comme suit: [ … ] / Arts, Faculty of / French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of / Graduate

Dans cette thèse, le sujet que nous avons souhaité traiter est celui de la représentation et des transfigurations de la ville étrangère dans l’écriture française. Nous avons ainsi choisi les œuvres de Pierre Loti, Victor Segalen, Pierre-Jean Remy et Suzanne Bernard, afin de pouvoir expliquer le sujet à l’aide d’exemples concrets, c’est-à-dire en analysant l’image de la ville de Pékin dans les œuvres françaises du XXe siècle. Au cours de cette étude, nous abordons en profondeur l'image de Pékin et en particulier son évolution historique chez les auteurs des différentes périodes que nous avons présentées. Nous étudions cette évolution de l’image de Pékin à partir de trois dimensions. La première dimension est celle de l'histoire citadine, ainsi que celle de sa présence dans le texte littéraire et de son influence sur la représentation. Il s'agit d’une approche plutôt géocritique qui examine les relations entre les espaces humains et la littérature. La deuxième dimension est celle du Pékin des signes. Nous étudierons les textes dans une optique imagologique, en nous focalisant sur la manière dont l’écrivain transcrit le réel, ainsi que sur la représentation de l’objet d’étude. Enfin, la troisième dimension porte sur l'évolution des formes et de l’écriture romanesques. / In this thesis, the subject we wanted to discuss is that of the representation and transfigurations of the foreign city in French writing. We have chosen the works of Pierre Loti, Victor Segalen, Pierre-Jean Remy and Suzanne Bernard, in order to explain the subject with the help of concrete examples, that is to say by analyzing the image of the city of Beijing in different French works of the twentieth century. During this study, we take a deep look at the image of Beijing, and especially at its historical evolution, as described by the authors of the different periods that we have presented. We chose to study this evolution of Beijing's image from three dimensions. The first dimension is that of the city history, as well as that of its presence in the literary text and its influence on representation. This is a rather geocritical approach that examines the relationships between human spaces and literature. The second dimension is the Beijing signs’ dimension. We will study the texts according to an imagological perspective, focusing on how the writer transcribes reality, as well as on the representation of the object of study. Finally, the third dimension is about the evolution of novelistic forms and writing.

Language limitations impose challenges to artistic productions. The “unspeakable” and “unrepresentable” refer to the moments when language barriers become obstacles to conveying meaning. How do contemporary Francophone literatures and film deal with the complexities of the representation of unrepresentable things? How do artists portray something that exceeds meaning, such as violence, which, according to Jean-Luc Nancy, “does not participate in any order of reasons […] does not transform what it assaults; rather, it takes away its form and meaning”? This interdisciplinary work examines the representation of violence and trauma in contemporary literature and film and brings together the representation of three different types of violence: extreme, social, and intimate. The artist’s acknowledgement of the limitations of language in such contexts affects the representation itself and enables a different kind of representation: alternative discourses that would sensitize readers/spectators. These new discourses make them active participants in the symbolization process, allowing them to fill the semantic, unrepresentable gaps through their imagination. Part I focuses on extreme violence in Rithy Panh’s, Véronique Tadjo’s, and Kivu Ruhorahoza’s films and narratives on the Cambodian and Rwandan Genocides. By examining these artists’ position as by turns both insiders and outsiders, I demonstrate that their strategy of alternating perspectives allows them to represent genocide in a more objective way. In Part II, taking the works of Shenaz Patel, Ananda Devi, Marie-Célie Agnant, and Faïza Guène as departing points, I explore the use of madness and humor as narrative discourses. The freedom given by humor and madness allows these authors to blur, negotiate, and criticize the socially constructed perceptions of what is normal and abnormal, sane and insane. Lastly, in works by Annie Ernaux, Ananda Devi, and Maïssa Bey, the practice of writing the self is a way to confront traumas, which become an interface between individual and collective histories. Revisiting violent and traumatic experiences through writing serves as catharsis, ultimately allowing the authors to reconcile with themselves. Juxtaposing these different types of unspeakable/unrepresentable human experiences, this research broadens the understanding of how artistic production can transgress the limitations of language. / 2021-11-12T00:00:00Z

French literature has undoubtedly exerted a marked influence over Haitian letters. Since the Middle Ages, notable elements of the fantastic, such as loups-garous and talking animals in lais and fables, all the way to the unheimlich narratives of the nineteenth century, are also present in Haitian works with strong overtones of the oral traditions of slave narratives. However, Haitian literature, given its syncretic nature, offers not just an array of talking animals and “magic realist” episodes, but a unique “fantastic being,” the zombie. In turn, these figures have made their way not just into the Haitian folkloric tradition, but infused with political undertones, have become pivotal metaphors for contemporary Haitian writers on the island, as well as for those who write in the diaspora, to explore the nation’s oppressive governments. This dissertation traces the origins of such figures and their creative reincarnations today. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2020. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

This dissertation reconsiders the creative and strategic crisscrossings among the African diaspora’s literary and cultural productions, paying special attention to the status and influence of Black America(ns), as a point of reference, on African and Afro-descendant writers working in French. Building upon the works of Paul Gilroy on the one hand, and Frida Ekotto on the other, I trace a major literary lineage in Afro-diasporic literature that revolves around the question of legibility. The texts studied in this dissertation are linked by their focus on a hermeneutic that is deployed along two main lines of thought. At the diegetic level, how are the characters being (mis)read by other members of the African diaspora, and reciprocally, how do the characters see these other members of the African diaspora and situate themselves in relation to them? At the meta-level, how does this reading system, or system of knowledge acquisition, invite or highlight a critique of genre (and gender) conventions and classifications? More specifically, I look at how writers such as Maryse Condé, Alain Mabanckou, and Léonora Miano establish affiliative ties with their Anglophone peers— Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Teju Cole, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie—across the Black Atlantic and across generations, in order to challenge the French system of racial and literary classification. In so doing, I argue that they also participate in shaping the figure of the contemporary black intellectual on a global scale, from a non-American black perspective. The two main objectives of my research are to situate African, Caribbean, and Afro-descendant writers working in French within a transnational literary tradition that transcends the long-lasting polemical—and today outdated—category of “Francophone Literature,” and to account for their contributions to it. / 2024-03-04T00:00:00Z

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